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PRESENTED AT THE 


ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE ON FOREIGN MISSIONS 


NEW YORK, APRIL 28, 1900 


BY 


REV. CHARLES CUTHBERT HALL, D.D. 


President of Union Theological Seminary 
Printed by permission 


The Board of Foreign {Missions 


REFORMED CHURCH BUILDING, 25 EAsT 22D STREET, NEW YORK 
ff 1900 





THE YOUNG MEN OF THE FUTURE MINISTRY 


HOW SHALL WE FIRE THEM WITH THE MISSIONARY 
PASSION AND MAKE THEM LEADERS OF 
MISSIONARY CHURCHES 


PRESENTED AT THE 


ECUMENICAL CONFERENCE ON FOREIGN MISSIONS 


NEW YORK, APRIL 28, tg00 


BY 


REV; COAREESS@U LH BER ISD ALES. Dy: 


President of Union Theological Seminary 


Printed by permission 


The Board of Foreign Missions 
REFORMED CHURCH BUILDING, 25 EAST 22D STREET, NEW YORK 


1900 


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THE YOUNG MEN OF THE FUTURE MINISTRY. 


According to the New Testament standard, the passion 
of a Christlike love for human lives is a greater thing than 
eloquence, knowledge, or faith. “If I speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am 
become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And if I 
have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all 
knowledge, and if I have faith so as to remove moun- 
tains, but have not love, I am nothing.”” The passion of a 
Christlike love for human lives develops in the soul of a 
Christian disciple from the presence in himself of powers 
and activities that reflect the mind of Christ. These are: 
Clear vision of the world, deep feeling toward ABs world, 
actual effort for the world. 

Our Lord saw all human life clearly. He saw the world 
as itis. No mists of optimism deceived Him—no veils 
of pessimism blinded Him. While taking note of every 
local interest, while loving and toiling for the individual, 
ever with clear eyes He saw the world, loved of God, cursed 
by sin, groaning and travailing for redemption. 

And with this clear vision of all human life our Lord 
joined the deep feelings of perfect appreciation and divine 
compassion, What He saw He felt. Upon His own holy 
soul He bore the griefs and carried the sorrows of human- 
ity. The sighing of the prisoner came up before Him, 
and the cry of the oppressed was in His ears. When He 
beheld the city He wept over it. He had compassion on 
the multitude because they were as sheep without a shep- 
herd. With unwavering face He turned toward Jerusalem 


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that He might be lifted up and draw all men unto Him- 
self. 

And to this clear vision of the world and this deep feel- 
ing toward the world our Lord added actual effort for the 
world. His sorrow was not the impotent lament of one 
who fain would do, yet cannot. His burden was not the 
crushing burden of pessimism. It was the weight of the 
Sacrificial Cross. It was the Mediatorial burden. For 
the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, 
despising the shame. He came not to lament but to re- 
deem. Hecame not to be ministered unto but to min- 
ister, and to give His life a ransom for many. 

And out of this holy triad of powers, His clear vision 
of the world, His deep feeling toward the world, His ac- 
tive effort for the world, issues the passion of His love for 
human lives —the love of Christ which passeth knowl- 
edge; the love which for us to know is for us to be filled 
with all the fullness of God. No conception within the 
range of human intelligence is so magnificent as this — 
the love of Christ for man; the boundless, fathomiess, 
deathless love of the Son of God. 

It is this conception that underlies the theme which 
engages our attention. We are attempting to answer this 
question: How shall we fire the young men of the future 
ministry with the missionary passion? How make them 
leaders of missionary churches ? 

The minister of Christ must have the spirit of Christ or 
he is none of His. ‘If any man have not the spirit of 
Christ he is none of His.’’ He may speak with the tongues 
of men and of angels, but if he have not the passion of a 
Christlike love he has not the spirit of Christ. He may 
have all knowledge, he may have a faith that could move 
mountains, but if he have not the passion of a Christlike 
love, he has not the spirit of Christ. 


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To ask, therefore, how we shall fire with missionary 
passion the young men of the future ministry is to ask 
not how shall we add unto them something beyond and 
additional to their ministerial training, but how we shall 
make them true ministers of the Lord Jesus. For with- 
out the missionary passion they are not able ministers of 
the New Testament. They are disabled, deficient, half- 
equipped. They lack the fullness of the spirit of Christ. 

The problem of the divinity school is this: Not how to 
train an occasional man for the foreign field, but how to 
kindle the missionary passion in every man that passes 
through the school that he may thereby become an able 
minister of Christ. For if, as Canon Edmonds said in his 
address on the translation of the Holy Scripture, “the 
missionary idea is conquering the life of the churches,” 
then the missionary idea must conquer the life of every 
man who proposes to enter the ministry of the churches, 
whether abroad or at home. In the last analysis it is a 
secondary consideration whether any individual student 
in the divinity school has volunteered for service abroad. 
The primary and essential thing is that there shall be 
within the school a sacred altar of missionary passion, 
whereat the torch of every man shall be kindled and the 
lip of every man shall be touched with the living coal. 

This conception of the life of the divinity school as a 
life transfused and saturated with the spirit of missions is 
founded upon two practical needs, — the need of the man 
who, possibly, may have the gifts for service abroad ; the 
need of the man who may enter the pastorate at home. 

As for the man who, possibly, may have gifts for service 
abroad: it is his need, it is his right, to have an atmosphere 
about him that shall promote the deep self-discovery 
which may lead him to volunteer; or that shall stablish, 
strengthen, and settle the purpose formed in college days 


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to do his life work upon the foreign field. The divinity 
school should be hot with the zeal for evangelization ; it 
should be radiant with the appreciation of missionary 
heroism ; it should be alert and eager for contact with the 
living workers ; it should be charged with solemn anxiety 
for the world’s condition, so that no man can live within 
its walls without facing for himself the vital issue: “Is 
it Christ’s will for me that I go forth to serve Him in the 
regions beyond?” 

As for the man who shall enter the pastorate at home: 
he cannot be an able minister of the Lord Jesus until his 
torch has been kindled at this altar, his lip touched with 
this living coal. Deny him this access in the days of his 
ministerial training, fail to provide him with the world- 
wide interest, neglect to teach him how to lift up his eyes 
and look upon the white harvest fields of the world, omit 
to conquer him with the missionary idea, and he goes 
forth to his life work lagging behind the eager spirit of 
his time, shackled with disadvantage, condemned in an 
age of catholicity to lead a life of provincialism. 

If he has not found within his training school the at- 
mosphere that feeds the missionary passion, if in his im- 
maturity and inexperience he has been suffered to pass 
through and pass out into the active ministry ignorant of 
the mighty world of missions, he has been robbed of 
his birthright. For this knowledge, this atmosphere,’this 
impulse belong to him in his own name and in the name 
of the Church he seeks to serve. 

He requires it for himself that he may become a man 
of vision, a man of large and powerful conceptions, a man 
of capacity to inspire others; he requires it for himself 
to protect him against a dry scholasticism, to advance him 
beyond intolerance and emhittered partisanship, to lift him 
above feeble, petty, and trivial ambitions, disputes, and 


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jealousies ; he requires it for himself to make him great in 
sympathy, meek and lowly in heart, apostolic in his view of 
Christ and Christianity. 

He requires this missionary passion not for himself 
alone, but in the name of the Church he seeks to serve. 
For four great functions belong to him who in the Chris- 
tian pastorate of these latter days expresses the relation of 
the ministry at home to missions abroad. 

It is his to overcome the resistance of uninstructed 
prejudice. In the mighty consensus of this Conference 
it requires effort to realize that in any Christian heart 
there can be resistance of Foreign Missions. Yet such 
resistance on the part of some has come within our obser- 
vation ; a resistance negative rather than positive, born of 
misapprehension and the lack of knowledge. God grant 
that the vast influences radiating from this Christian 
gathering may help to dissolve the last vestiges of that 
strange, unreasoning antagonism ! 

It is his to awaken the attention of apathetic minds, 
which, content with the form rather than the life of Chris- 
tianity, are blinded by local religious interests to the 
larger questions of the world’s evangelization. This 
apathy can be broken. The same keen interest that 
springs to the realization of political events can be awak- 
ened toward the facts of the kingdom of Christ. But the 
man who thus conquers others must himself first be con- 
quered and set on fire of God. 

It is to educate the Church’s intelligence. Knowledge 
is the true and substantial basis of an interest in missions. 
Vague perceptions of duty may help a flagging interest to 
survive, but the zeal that endures, the zeal that grows, the 
zeal that rises to the level of consecration is the zeal that 
is according to knowledge. The educational function of 
the missionary pastor cannot be over-stated. He must 


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mediate between a great but little known literature and 
a community of minds not likely to come under its influ- 
ence except through his leadership. 

It is to raise at home supplies for the church abroad ; to 
find the means that shall maintain the work of God. The 
far-off workers at the front depend upon him to cooperate 
with them by maintaining their supplies. He is a mis- 
sionary as well as they, for the effects of his influence are 
telling on the maintenance of evangelization. By his ac- 
ceptance of the pastorate he accepts an implied obligation 
to codperate with those who are face to face with heathen- 
ism. To place a man in the pastorate in whom there is 
not the missionary passion is a twofold disaster: it breaks 
faith with those who have gone to the front, believing that 
the leaders of the church at home will keep pace with 
their advance ; it occupies the place of a better equipped 
man, who, having that passion, might stir a whole com- 
munity to acts of sacrifice. 

These considerations bring before us the relation of the 
divinity school to world-wide missions. The question now 
under discussion — How shall we fire the young men of 
the future ministry with the missionary passion ?— is al- 
ready in process of solution, and it is not impossible to 
show the main lines along which that solution is destined 
to advance. 

The study of missions is slowly rising to the rank of a 
theological discipline. That it has not done so sooner is 
not altogether so strange as at first appears. The litera- 
ture of missions is comparatively a modern literature, and 
recognition of its importance has not been unduly delayed. 
The church is making her modern evangelistic history so 
rapidly and abundantly that it is but time to begin to feel 
the thrilling effects of that history reacting upon the divin- 
ity school. At many points that most salutary reaction 


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is taking place and the study of missions is finding its 
appropriate rank and proportion, while the opulent and 
splendid literature of missions is pouring into the library, 
It will soon be impossible in all the divinity schools that 
seek to keep pace with the times for a man to pass 
through his course of training without having the world- 
wide point of view, without seeing the world-wide vision, 
unless he rejects it for himself, and shuts his eyes 
against it. The contact of living missionary workers with 
the divinity school life shall become frequent and _inti- 
mate. The realism of missions shall demonstrate itself to 
many who once had but a speculative interest therein. 
The philosophical aspects of missions shall appear in the 
light of the modern literature, and the whole subject of 
missions in its largest and noblest relations shall take its. 
place in the curriculum beside the study of ancient lan- 
guages, of Church history, of the doctrines of faith. 

But the study of missions as a discipline of the divinity 
school cannot by itself bring to pass that setting on fire of 
the future ministry with the missionary passion. 

I see other forces at work which make for that glorious. 
end. 

I see developing at many points a new conception of the 
ministry. It must attract toward it many of the most gifted 
and consecrated of our young men. The college and the 
seminary are drawing closer together. The study of 
missions in the colleges is bringing out a type of man- 
hood which is full of heroic beauty, enthusiasm, and faith. 
The under-graduate is studying the world to-day as never 
before, is feeling in his fresh young heart the thrill of the 
new conceptions of applied Christianity, is realizing Christ’s 
love and Christ’s present salvation for the world in terms 
of reality. And in many a college to-day is found the 
very flower of our youth to whom the ministry appears, 


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not as areserved and gloomy world of ecclesiastical techni- 
calities, but as the King’s own highway to joyful and 
abundant service. 

I see a spirit developing among our young men that 
portends a vast accession of missionary enthusiasm for 
the ministry of the future. The Lord Jesus Christ is 
manifesting Himself in His Absolute Godhead, in His 
Availing Atonement, in His Enlightening Word, to a 
great company of our most educated and most gifted 
youths. Personal consecration for personal service is a 
conception of living that grows more and more attractive 
to a multitude of our finest minds; and out of this class 
of minds shall be gathered the ministry of the future. 

It shall be a ministry devoted to the highest scholarship 
and to the most fearless search for truth: looking upon 
the culture of the mind as no foe to spirituality of life. 

It shall be a Christ-filled ministry: beholding the glory 
of God in the face of Jesus Christ ; worshiping Him with 
the enthusiasm of an absolutely fearless affection, and 
presenting Him as the only Name given under heaven 
whereby men must be saved. 

It shall be a Biblical ministry: holding fast the faithful 
Word and preaching that Word as the one great, sufficient 
message and revelation of God to man. 

It shall be a missionary ministry: full of passion to re- 
deem ; clear-eyed to discover the ongoing of Christ’s work ; 
faithful in its stewardship at home and abroad; apostolic 
in its assurance that Christ has ordained it to bear much 
fruit; apostolic in its eagerness to spread far and wide 
the Gospel of the Risen and Ascended Lord; apostolic in 
its blessed hope that that Unseen and Crowned Saviour 
shall surely come again. 





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